<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<meta charset="UTF-8">
<title>and the rest is just confetti by heartofwinterfell</title>
<style type="text/css">

body { background-color: #ffffff; }
.CI {
text-align:center;
margin-top:0px;
margin-bottom:0px;
padding:0px;
}
.center   {text-align: center;}
.cover    {text-align: center;}
.full     {width: 100%; }
.quarter  {width: 25%; }
.smcap    {font-variant: small-caps;}
.u        {text-decoration: underline;}
.bold     {font-weight: bold;}
</style>
</head>
<body>
<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/27273391">and the rest is just confetti</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/heartofwinterfell/pseuds/heartofwinterfell'>heartofwinterfell</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>soulmate, dry your eyes [2]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Julie and The Phantoms (TV)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Alternate Universe - Soulmates, F/M, to the key of rihanna: they found love in a ghostly place</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-10-30</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-10-30</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-07 03:09:28</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>3,662</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/27273391</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/heartofwinterfell/pseuds/heartofwinterfell</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Luke Patterson’s not the type to sit around waiting for his soulmate. He’s been out looking for her all his life. He just never thought much about after.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Julie Molina/Luke Patterson</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>soulmate, dry your eyes [2]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/1991287</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>22</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>487</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>and the rest is just confetti</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>And we're back! This work is a companion to my previous work, "a holy thing (to love what death has touched)"  but they can be read in any order. Or you can just read this one! The choice, dear reader, is yours.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Luke Patterson’s a shaker, a rattler, a roller.</p>
<p>He’s been that way all his life. He climbed the bars of his crib, he sat atop the monkey bars of the jungle gym, he led the other kids in impromptu songs in the middle of a math pop quiz. If life were a drum, he’d have to play his fastest.</p>
<p>“There are things in life you have to slow down for,” his mother always said, when he was racing out the door to another practice, another gig, another opportunity to chase after and catch by its golden tail. She’d have that disappointed look that seemed permanently frozen on her face.</p>
<p>Everything at home moved at a glacial pace. His parents made dinner in slow cookers, and watched documentaries that lasted decades, and they made decisions etched in stone, never to change. Never moving forward, forever sitting in the same stuffy armchairs, reading the same thousand page books, listening and making no music.</p>
<p>There were only two things in his life Luke knew were stone set.</p>
<p>One: He was going to be a rockstar, even if it killed him.</p>
<p>Two: his soulmate.</p>
<p>And the rest, well.</p>
<p> </p>
<hr/>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <em>who are you and what are you doing in my mom’s studio?</em>
</p>
<p>Kicked to the curb, sporting bruises on their wrist and elbows from being manhandled by security, they made it halfway home before Alex imploded. “Luke, I don’t know how many times I have to keep telling you this, I can’t get arrested for breaking and entering. I wouldn’t last a day in prison!”</p>
<p>Luke had been so sure that studio was the one.</p>
<p>He had these lists, kept on scrap paper or scrawled in the margins of old music sheets, lists of studios he’d see downtown. Art studios, and dance studios, and yoga studios. A studio apartment complex, once. The music studios, though, were the ones that quickened his heart’s tempo, like the ramp up to a song’s triumphant final chorus. He knew it’d be in a music studio. It had to be.</p>
<p>It just hadn’t been the last six he had tried.</p>
<p>“You know, maybe if you spent as much time on your homework as you did busting into music studios, your parents wouldn’t get so mad at you spending all your time at band practices,” Alex went on. Bringing in the parents was a low blow, but one Luke could forgive under the circumstances. They were all skating on razor thin ice at home. A trip to a police station could be what finally cracked the surface.</p>
<p>“If I say it was a stupid idea, can we just drop it?” The words on his wrist buzzed. It sometimes felt like they were calling someone long distance, only for no one to pick up on the other end of the line.</p>
<p>Luke thought of his notebook, left back in the garage, another name to strike off the latest list. Everything in his life seemed marked up in red pen lately - tests, and song lyrics, and places that never led to his soulmate. He had been so sure it was the one.</p>
<p>Alex and Reggie must have had a telepathic conversation over his head, because Alex did drop it and Reggie wrapped an arm around his shoulders while suggesting, “Why don’t we stop somewhere for ice cream before we head to Bobby’s?”</p>
<p>On the way from the ice cream parlor to Bobby’s, the taste of vanilla and chocolate swirled together on his tongue, Luke spotted a new art studio on the corner. He mentally added it to the list.</p>
<p> </p>
<hr/>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <em>what to say when I first meet her:</em>
</p>
<p>I’m Luke Patterson, the great love of your life.</p>
<p>I’m Luke and the music led me to you.</p>
<p>I’ve been searching for you my entire life.</p>
<p> </p>
<hr/>
<p> </p>
<p>Outside of great efforts to enter every studio in Los Angeles, Sunset Curve did not talk about soulmates much.</p>
<p>Reggie used to show his words to every new person in their class, back when they slurped juice boxes, and made spaghetti out of play-doh, and didn’t yet grasp how personal a thing a soulmate’s words were. Reggie’s words were written in loopy script along his hipbone. He never raised his shirt anymore to show them, but sometimes Luke caught him unconsciously running his fingers there. Luke hadn’t seen the words in so long now he forgot half their contents.</p>
<p>
  <em>- such a cool sound.</em>
</p>
<p>Bobby had his words on his back shoulder, or so that was what the other boys had been told. He once mentioned off-hand to Luke that he never thought of them much, because they weren’t in a place he could easily see. Luke couldn’t imagine not thinking of his soulmate every day. He thought of her practically every time he picked up his guitar.</p>
<p>
  <em>you’re a hard man to find, trevor wilson.</em>
</p>
<p>It was Alex’s words that made them pause anytime they started talking too much of soulmates. Because Alex had gray words.</p>
<p>The first time they ever saw them, encircling Alex’s ankle like a cuff, Reggie had blurted out, “Does that mean he’s dead?”</p>
<p>Luke had punched him in the arm and Reggie was still rubbing at the offended spot when Alex said quietly, “I think so. That’s what gray words always mean, right?”</p>
<p>
  <em>aw man, you dinged my board.</em>
</p>
<p>It wasn’t until later - years - that Luke thought to ask, “So what was it like, meeting him?”</p>
<p>Alex had put down his drum sticks and, with trouble meeting Luke’s eyes, said, “Would you believe me if I said I don’t know? If I told you I still have never met him before.”</p>
<p>“But that’s impossible, right? You can’t meet a…”</p>
<p>“Yeah, it’s just my luck, right?”</p>
<p>Alex’s head had felt heavy where it rested on Luke’s shoulder. Luke spent that entire night writing a song about Reggie’s crooked teeth just to make him smile again. It was one of the few times Luke could remember his blind faith in the system of soulmates shaking, if only a little bit.</p>
<p> </p>
<hr/>
<p> </p>
<p>It was one of those nights, where it got darker and darker and no stars came out and neither Luke nor Reggie wanted to go home.</p>
<p>They were Los Angeles boys, born and bred, and that meant they’ve been living with earthquakes all their life. And everyone kept saying The Big One was coming. </p>
<p>Nowadays, every time Luke tiptoed through his front door he wondered if this would be it. The big one. He soundtracked it to a heavy metal song, all clanging percussion and screeching guitar riffs, his mother breaking a picture frame and him slamming a door. He feared though, deep down in the places even his music was scared to go, that it would be quiet. He’d walk in to find his bags waiting for him at the threshold of the living room, packed before he could do it himself.</p>
<p>They just didn’t understand. That was the refrain Luke kept singing to himself, the refrain every teenager’s been singing since the invention of rock ‘n roll. They just didn’t understand.</p>
<p>She’s going to, Luke thought, thumb running absently along the small a’s and long y’s of his words.</p>
<p>“Have you ever thought about what you’re going to do,” Reggie said, the silence that hung over them at once drifting away like a rolling cloud. “You know, whenever you finally find her.”</p>
<p>“What do you mean?”</p>
<p>“I don’t know, man.” Reggie tilted his head toward Luke, a thoughtful look on his face. “It just feels like you’ve been searching for her for so long. What are you going to do when that’s over?”</p>
<p>Luke shrugged, as if it were all so simple, spelled out across a giant billboard right in front of their eyes. “Then I’ll have my soulmate.”</p>
<p>But even in the moment after he said it, Luke knew that wasn’t the answer. It was like he was listening to a half-finished album and whenever he finished track six, the record stopped. He knew there were more songs to come, he just didn’t know what made up the melodies. It was impossible to even form a lyric.</p>
<p>“I don’t need to think about after yet,” Luke found himself saying. “Just like us becoming famous rock stars, we gotta get to the top of that mountain first before we start thinking about looking down.”</p>
<p>“Or using the peak as a launch site for an awesome rocket into space and we become the first rock band to play on the moon.”</p>
<p>Luke laughed and wondered, not for the first time, how he got so lucky to have friends who dreamed as big as he did. They knew he was right. You had to hustle and break down doors and pick at the strings of your instrument until your fingers bled.</p>
<p>You had to get to the Big One before you started worrying about the aftermath.</p>
<p> </p>
<hr/>
<p> </p>
<p>THE ORPHEUM<br/>SUNSET CURVE<br/>SHOWCASE -- SOLD OUT</p>
<p>
  <em>one night only, no return engagements.</em>
</p>
<p> </p>
<hr/>
<p> </p>
<p>“I know I saw something. I’m not crazy.”</p>
<p>This girl seemed to think she was talking to air and empty space, as though they weren’t standing right behind her. Luke thought the best thing to do was reassure her. “We’re all a little crazy sometimes.”</p>
<p>Luke thought wrong. Her scream echoed off the vaulted ceiling and only distantly did Luke hear Alex begging her to stop. She - the trespasser, brandishing a cross at them - acted as if they were the ones who did not belong. Here, in the garage where they played Sunset Curve into being. Luke was ready to say as much when -</p>
<p>“Who are you and what are you doing in my mom’s studio?”</p>
<p>It didn’t connect. Yet.</p>
<p> </p>
<hr/>
<p> </p>
<p>“Did you miss the part where she kicked us out?”</p>
<p>“Well, she did say this was her mom’s studio…”</p>
<p>“...wait.”</p>
<p> </p>
<hr/>
<p> </p>
<p>She needed time.</p>
<p>Luke admittedly had a messy track record with that. His dad used to say he was born with patience as thin as tissue paper. He rushed his parents through picture books because he wanted to know the ending, he raced through tests because it meant going out to recess early, he called back venues every hour to see if that slot had opened up, even if they told him to stand by.</p>
<p>Luke wasn’t a stand by guy. He didn’t wait in the wings or sit on the sidelines.</p>
<p>But as Luke had told Julie, he might have all the time in the world. Time enough to learn how to wait. There were things in life you had to slow down for.</p>
<p>Luke’s only amendment would be to add the word “after.” In the after life, there were things more than worth slowing down for.</p>
<p> </p>
<hr/>
<p> </p>
<p>“So when am I going to find my soulmate?” Reggie posed the question long after Julie went to bed for the night.</p>
<p>With many of the mechanics of being a ghost lost on him still, Luke had yet to figure out if ghosts needed sleep. There were times he found himself lazing on his couch and, as if in an instant, three hours had passed. But on nights like these, where the clock ticked ever close to three in the morning, Luke felt the exact same way he’d feel at three in the afternoon. His body demanded nothing from him anymore.</p>
<p>For a boy who once wanted every hour in the day, if only to devote it to music, this new development should be exhilarating. Instead, it made Luke feel untethered.</p>
<p>“Do you still want to find her?” Luke asked. He felt Alex’s eyes flicker over to him.</p>
<p>“Of course I want to find her!” spoken like Luke’s question had been absurd. Maybe it was. “And it’s gotta happen soon, right? I mean, what are the odds you and Alex find your soulmates within days of each other? Astronomical!”</p>
<p>“I mean - I guess,” Luke said with a weak shrug.</p>
<p>“I’m just surprised you used the word astronomically correctly,” Alex said. He caught the pillow Reggie lobbed at him with ease. “You’ll find her soon, buddy. But in the meantime, you have us.”</p>
<p>“And Julie,” Reggie pointed out. “And Flynn. And Ray, and Carlos. And all our new adoring fans.” He knocked his shoulder against Luke’s on the last one and Luke couldn’t contain his own grin.</p>
<p>“Yeah,” Alex said, nudging at Luke’s ankle with the toe of his boot. “We have a lot of people.”</p>
<p>His words hummed, as if in quiet but definite agreement.</p>
<p> </p>
<hr/>
<p> </p>
<p>Sometimes, in the space between testing the limits of their ghostly powers and building a new band from the ashes of the old, Luke forgot that he had Julie’s words running along his wrist.</p>
<p>It went like this: he’d think about her every hour, about how good her voice would sound on a new harmony line he wrote, about how she’d laugh when he told her about Reggie falling through the couch, about how she’d push his lyrics one step farther, to the place they needed to go. And it had nothing to do with words or fate.</p>
<p>Luke liked Julie Molina as a friend. He liked her as the lead singer of their band. He liked her in a way that got him looking at her sometimes and wondering how a girl like that could be real.</p>
<p>That was when he’d remember. His words seemed to sing, to the tune of a long, sad mourning song. Because Julie Molina deserved far better than the universe gave her. Luke wondered, sometimes, if he should tell her that. He was ready to give her all the time in the world, but he wanted her to know he’d be okay if she needed more than air.</p>
<p>It was good a time as any when Alex had disappeared from the garage and Reggie went trailing after Julie’s dad. That left Luke laying on the couch, his guitar in his lap as he listlessly played snatches of an old song that he used to listen to on a cassette tape in his room when his parents had told him to turn the lights out.</p>
<p>“What is that?” Julie asked, leaning back against the piano. The setting sun streaming through the high windows gave her hair a golden sheen. Luke missed a note. “Is it something you’re writing?”</p>
<p>“This? Nah, it’s just ‘Moonlight Mile’ by the Stones.”</p>
<p>He started strumming the chorus, a little slower than Richards, and began to sing,</p>
<p>
  <em>“I am just living to be lying by your side</em>
  <br/>
  <em>But I'm just about a moonlight mile down the road.”</em>
</p>
<p>He continued playing and as he did, Julie began plunking notes on the piano, in perfect harmony and just in time.</p>
<p>“It’s all about life on the road,” Luke said. “I used to play it and imagine what it was going to be like when Sunset Curve went out on tour. All the cities we’d see, all the fans we’d meet, that kind of stuff.”</p>
<p>“You’re still going to get to do all of that,” Julie said, so decisively that Luke missed another note. And then another, and another, until he was playing a completely different song. Julie, fingers still running across her piano keys, stayed in harmony and perfectly in time.</p>
<p>“We’re going to get to do all that,” Luke said softly. He’d tell her some other time.</p>
<p>
  <em>“I’m hiding, baby, and I’m dreaming</em>
  <br/>
  <em>I’m riding down your moonlight mile.”</em>
</p>
<p> </p>
<hr/>
<p> </p>
<p>Luke’s parents were simple soulmates.</p>
<p>That was the term given to people with inconsequential words – hello, nice to meet you, excuse me, I’m sorry, can I help you?</p>
<p>The fear of being born with simple words was the doubt that followed you like a shadow from the moment you met your soulmate. How many times did you say hello to someone across a lifetime? How many times did another person say nice to meet you in return? How did you know it was the first person who ever said excuse you and not the second? How did you stake a lifetime on something as simple as I’m sorry?</p>
<p>Luke asked his mom once, “is there a feeling you got? Did something happen that made it different?”</p>
<p>His mom had swatted his feet off the coffee table and sat beside him. Her little “hello” on her ring finger seemed to shine in the light. “It didn’t feel like the world was going to end, or begin again. I don’t think either of us were really very sure until after a few dates.”</p>
<p>“But then how do you…”</p>
<p>“Know?” His mom smiled gently. She didn’t sound sad that he had asked. If anything, she sounded like she had been waiting for the day this conversation came. “Because we made a choice. We got to know each other and decided to build a life together. You’re not soulmates because some randomly selected words throw you together. You’re going to be soulmates because of everything you choose to do after.”</p>
<p>Luke thought of that conversation as he watched his mom read the song he never got to sing to her. The song that Julie chose to bring her. And Luke only wished there was a way to tell his mom that she was right about almost everything.</p>
<p> </p>
<hr/>
<p> </p>
<p>He tried writing her a goodbye song, but every chord he came up with sounded like the opening to a funeral dirge. That wasn’t Julie. That wasn’t who they were.</p>
<p>Luke returned to her dream box instead. He slipped the only thing he had left to say to her there. This time around, he wouldn’t leave with any regrets.</p>
<p>
  <em>“Your life was my after life’s best part.”</em>
</p>
<p>He hoped she’d find a use for it, in a happier song.</p>
<p> </p>
<hr/>
<p> </p>
<p>He felt alive.</p>
<p>He always used to feel this way after an unbelievable show. Every color appeared ultraviolet. The air smelled of a bonfire and it had an electric pulse. He had the aftertaste of music on his tongue and it tasted of salt and honey. There had been shows where he thought his heart would give out because it was beating too fast.</p>
<p>Tonight, after the Orpheum, he felt it again. He swore he had a real heart in his chest.</p>
<p>It all had to mean something. Playing the prophetic show, the stamps disappearing, being able to hold Julie in his arms and smell the lavender and sweat in her hair. The gray words on her wrist Luke caught sight of when she finally pulled away.</p>
<p>Either that or the universe played constant cheap tricks and it saved its most wicked for Luke.</p>
<p>He didn’t want that for Julie.</p>
<p>She had just left the garage, seeming to float out as if she were the phantom. Still high on the adrenaline of the Orpheum, Luke hardly thought about what he was doing. It wouldn’t be a first. He simply blinked and when he opened his eyes, he was on Julie’s front porch just as she was rounding the stone steps.</p>
<p>She didn’t look all that surprised to see him again.</p>
<p>“Julie, I -” Luke’s hands fidgeted. He suddenly wished moments like this came with a script. Or at least some familiar melody. “I know you said that stuff about needing a little time and I totally get that you probably need more, but I guess I just wanted to say - I’m sorry.”</p>
<p>Julie blinked, as though the words didn’t quite connect. “Why would you be sorry?”</p>
<p>“I didn’t realize right away that your words - that they’d be gray. And it must have sucked going through life thinking…” Luke thought of Alex, of all the times his face fell when someone started singing of soulmates. “I don’t even know. So I guess I’m sorry for being the world’s most complicated soulmate.”</p>
<p>“You don’t have to apologize. It’s not your fault,” she said. “I mean, I don’t mind when things are complicated. I’m in a ghost band, aren’t I?”</p>
<p>The laughter that bubbled up from Luke’s chest was real, but so were the saltwater tears that pooled in his eyes. As real as it all could be, for a ghost. He felt that phantom heart pounding against his ribcage when Julie threw her arms around him. As he hugged her back, everything else fell away.</p>
<p>“I want to be alive for you, Julie.” His words thrummed. It felt like a fall of rain.</p>
<p>Julie only squeezed tighter and whispered back, “We’re going to work this out. I promise.”</p>
<p>He believed her. Not because he thought the universe especially fair, but because if anyone was going to conquer it, he bet on Julie Molina. He’d bet on her every time.</p>
<p> </p>
<hr/>
<p> </p>
<p>There was a new list. One could argue it was a new list made up of several smaller sub-lists. Luke kept it all on a white board he scrounged up in the loft and displayed it proudly for all the rest of the band to read.</p>
<p>“See, these are clubs and venues around Los Angeles that Julie and the Phantoms should try to book gigs at, and these are management companies that represent bands with a similar sound, and these are -”</p>
<p>“You should have never let him discover the internet,” Alex whispered, eyes wide with comic horror.</p>
<p>“Is that one place really called the Dunce Macaroni?” Reggie asked, head craned sideways.</p>
<p>“I think it all looks great,” Julie said, moving to stand beside Luke. She slipped her hand into his, as easy as that. “We gotta make opportunities if we want to book a tour by next year, right?”</p>
<p>She understood. Luke had never thought for a single second in his life that she wouldn’t.</p>
<p>Because there really were some things that were set in stone, even if they came with asterisks and fine print. Luke Patterson was going to be a rock star, since it had already killed him and that didn’t stop him for long.</p>
<p>Julie Molina was his soulmate. She was going to be the greatest star of them all.</p>
<p>And the rest? </p>
<p>They’d figure it out on the road.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>1) Real talk, I don't think any of the guys knew Bobby's words, but I was too invested in the idea he gets his stage name from his words to not include that little detail.</p>
<p>2) It was harder than I thought writing Luke's point of view, but I ended up having a lot of fun with this and I hope you did, too! The world is a mess right now, but I'm glad Julie and the Phantoms is around to bring us some much needed joy. Stay safe out there and thank you so much for reading!</p></blockquote></div></div>
</body>
</html>